The fact that in adipocire from different animals, the same substances are found accompanying the original fat of the animal, as the goat-like or mutton smell in sheep, and the tallow smell of the fossil adipocire, is suggestive, and should shift the burden of experimental proof upon those who maintain the formation of this substance from fibrine. The microscopic experiments militate against the transformation from fibrine. Those that believe in this change think to have proof from the shape, as it were, of certain muscles transformed into fat; but fibrine does not require to lose much substance in the shape of ammonia, &c., for this transformation, and there would not be, therefore, a great disturbance in the shape of the fibres of muscle; at any rate, it would be reasonable to expect, that with the microscope, traces of an arrangement of the fatty particles into fibres or rows would here and there be seen, but this is not the case, and the appearance is that of fat particles of equal size among themselves, and of a diameter one-fourth that of the original fat globules, and indeed presenting all the appearances to be expected from a mass of fat undergoing alteration from the decomposition of its oleine and glycerine; and finally in the experiment where adipocire was artificially formed, no gain of fat was observed, but a loss of what was purposely left upon the specimen under examination. I shall delay an examination of the products in my hands, until the separation of the fatty acids is improved. It would be easy enough with the present methods to isolate the two principal constituents of the fatty acids from the material in hand; but small quantities of new products would inevitably escape observation. The _desiderata_ in working the fatty acids at present, are, First, separation of the oleic acid, without too much loss of substance. Second, a less circuitous method of separating the fatty acids than by Heintz’s method, which renders difficult the isolation of small quantities of a different acid, as shown by his mistake of anthropic acid.